Blue
by arcanioque
Summary: And Maria knows when she doesn’t stand a chance. [faytxmaria tones]


Blue 

_faytxmaria tones,_

_drabble._

_And Maria knows when she doesn't stand a chance. faytxmaria tones _

_-_

Maria knows when she doesn't stand a chance.

The first time her blue eyes looked into her bright green ones, she knows when she has already lost _him_ to another. Or perhaps, that isn't at all possible, because what is not yours in the first place, can never make you feel like you've lost something important. Still, that does not explain matters to her heart when it pains seeing them together, laughing as a pair of childhood friends, and perhaps, something _more. _

It scares Maria sometimes, how she'll hastily look away from them just so she can prevent that funny feeling in her stomach, like a knot tightening, or the fluttering of butterflies when he accidentally looks her way and catches her looking at them. She'll keep her brave front, that she's not flustered. She maintains that formal, all business-like manner of hers, but inside, she's not very sure why there are mostly butterflies fluttering.

She knows she's a comrade, just another teammate. Someone he can associate with since they've had the same experience as someone's else experiments, tools for other's dirty wishes. And Maria knows she can never be more.

Maria, too, knows when she's already been beaten to the line.

Like when he smiles at _her_ instead, and offers _her_ the flower he'd picked from one of the fields of Elicoor. He smiles at everyone, but saves his best ones only for _her_. And everyone loves to see them together, and go at it one day. Cliff Fittir throws in random teases like this, causing him to blush all the time. And even though he denies it around everybody else, Maria knows.

She knows when he's already fallen in love, and how this lucky person just isn't her, but another.

_She's_ everything Maria cannot be no matter how hard she tries, and Maria is afraid to wake up one day to realize she'll want to dream to be _her_ - the girl who can wear pretty dresses and sphagetti tops, the girl with beautiful flowing brown locks, the girl with vibrant sparkling green eyes, the girl with flawless complexion, the girl who can only simply look in his way, and earn a boyish, shy smile back without even so much as trying.

Maria doesn't dream of becoming someone like that. She doesn't admit it, but she's fine the way she is - tough, headstrong, stubborn, always to the point, direct, harsh at times, business comes first before anything, introverted, how she likes to keep things to herself, a little cynical and skeptical about life even.

And that's why it scares her, how Maria tends to look towards _her _way, wondering how it would be like, if just for a day, she becomes _her_ instead. It isn't the fact that she wants to know how it's like being a beautiful, sought-after lady with no troubles turning the opposite sex' heads. She simply wants to know how it's like being a lady who can make _him_ smile just as easy as ABC, or 123.

It's just as simple.

Maria knows she'll never be the one who can make him smile like he to _her_, never be the one at the end to receive those Elicoorian flowers, never be the one he'll share secrets or jokes with, never be the one he'll notice or look in the way the same way he does her.

It's not like she doesn't try. She, of all people, knows. Hell, she _tries_. The countless times she'd near him just to make him glance her way. Just a glimpse, or two. Or strike up conversation with Cliff who'll be next to him, just to earn a nod of acknowledgement from his way. Or ignore the familiar pang of her heart by talking to _her _just so to get him involved in the conversation as well.

But they say, the harder you try, the higher your hopes get. And the more you raise your expectations, and you fall, the deeper the pain cuts into you and leaves you scarred.

Maria knows, she tries. Harder than anyone. But she, too, knows, she's tired, and if she goes on like this, she'll only keep falling, and falling. That's why she's stopped all of these futile efforts, stopped these attempts altogether. She favors pride, as much as she doesn't admit it outloud as Cliff, but she knows when it's time to give up, and when to let go.

And that's why, now, as she stands and watches them together, laughing and sharing another joke about something that only a pair of childhood friends like them can understand, she knows only the ability to turn her back, and walk away, feeling as if she's intruded upon alien territory.

She doesn't belong, and she can try, and try all over again, try until she's fatigued, and bruised all over. Until the invisible scars upon her wrist are no longer razor-thin marks, but thick and obvious, until her heart can no longer take the pain, or when she's simply come to terms that she's mastered numb acceptance bit by bit already.

Maria stands now, and looks down to the floor. She's taking keen interest upon it so the tears don't come. Maria Traydor doesn't cry. Everybody knows that, and she knows it as well. Perhaps, if she closes her eyes enough, her tear ducts will stop filling up already.

She'll never be _her_, never be the girl in pretty dresses, and never the girl who can make _him_ look her way.

Precisely all this, what Maria knows, hurts her.

-

But what she doesn't know, can hurt, too.

Doesn't know that each time she turns away from them, it is _he _who looks up from having shared another joke with her, with incomprehensible array of emotions in his eyes. Doesn't know that each time she walks away from him just having spoken in few words, it strikes a pang in his heart and stirs something strange in the pit of his stomach. Doesn't know that each time she turns another head of the opposite sex, he feels like he should simply jump in and keep his arms around her so they don't touch her, and she'll be safe. Doesn't know that each time she looks into his eyes, he doesn't have the courage nor will to return her gaze because her looks electrify first, and then freeze him.

Doesn't know that he knows she loves him.

Doesn't know that he knows she thinks she'll never be his.

Doesn't know that he knows she believes he loves another .

Doesn't know that he knows she's been mistaken all this time.

And it's simple, how it hurts him, and her.

Because she doesn't know Fayt loves her, as she does, him.

**owari **


End file.
